Cocoa Recipes for Mac OS X

Rating:
Summary: Valuable Cocoa Reading
Review: Anyone serious about learning Cocoa should consider adding Cocoa Recipes to their reference arsenal. I have found it to be a valuable source of information that extends the essential Cocoa books authored by Hillegasse, and Anguish et al. Cocoa Recipes discusses in depth a number of areas not discussed extensively in other titles. I found the discussion on formatters very useful. Also, Cocoa Recipes provides an additional perspective in relation to core cocoa programming tasks. Best of all, it provides many practical, easy to adopt code examples. If you are serious about learning Cocoa, you will get something out of this book. Cocoa Recipes is best read after you have read one or two of the Cocoa books mentioned above. It will help round out your knowledge and will become a valuable reference source.

Rating:
Summary: The ULTIMATE MAC OS X tutorial learning guide
Review: Cocoa Recipes for Mac OS X is a great guide for anyone interested in writing applications for MAC OS X. It is chocked full of USEFUL real-life programming examples. Each chapter successively builds upon the last to churn out and refine a true to the bone Mac OS X application. Nearly everything you'd like to learn how to accomplish with the Cocoa Framework is here. Lots of code examples show you how to implement tabbed views, menus, drawers and a whole slew of other user-controls.

One outstanding feature this book provides (and should be standard in every programming book) is a Table of Topics. This table immediately follows the table of contents and provides an alphabetical list of controls, objects, and major classes from the Cocoa Framework and where in the book to find examples on coding these items. This feature is great. If you've ever thumbed through a programming book in frustration looking for an example on how to program some obscure function that you recall reading once... --you'll understand just how useful a Table of Topics is!

Rating:
Summary: The ULTIMATE MAC OS X tutorial learning guide
Review: Cocoa Recipes for Mac OS X is a great guide for anyone interested in writing applications for MAC OS X. It is chocked full of USEFUL real-life programming examples. Each chapter successively builds upon the last to churn out and refine a true to the bone Mac OS X application. Nearly everything you'd like to learn how to accomplish with the Cocoa Framework is here. Lots of code examples show you how to implement tabbed views, menus, drawers and a whole slew of other user-controls.

One outstanding feature this book provides (and should be standard in every programming book) is a Table of Topics. This table immediately follows the table of contents and provides an alphabetical list of controls, objects, and major classes from the Cocoa Framework and where in the book to find examples on coding these items. This feature is great. If you've ever thumbed through a programming book in frustration looking for an example on how to program some obscure function that you recall reading once... --you'll understand just how useful a Table of Topics is!

Rating:
Summary: Good but a chore to learn from
Review: I have been working on learning Cocoa part-time so this seemed like a good book to try to get me up to speed. There is a lot of information packed in this text- unlike some, there are really very few figures and pictures and there is an awful lot of explanatory text and digressions as new concepts arise. The main problem I have with the approach here is that it takes a _long_ time between successive builds of the application. In fact, one must plow through 70+ pages before even getting to the first time you are told to build an executable of what you have been working on. This really goes counter to the Cocoa paradigm of ease of application construction- I much prefer a more experimental approach in which small incremental changes are made to the application, so that the effect of new features can be appreciated right away. Here, by the time you rebuild the application, a lot of time has passed since you coded the features, so the connection between the code and the app feature is not so immediate or clear. Also, if there are bugs from your typing, it is hard to fix your app as it has been a long time since a previous build, so for someone new to Cocoa, it can be hard to know where to look for the errors.

Rating:
Summary: An unusual and very practical approach, but not for everyone
Review: This book takes an unusual approach that some people seem to like and others don't. The entire book is devoted to building a single Cocoa application, step by step. Each step builds on what has come before, so you really can't jump around in the book at all. And the book is entirely example-driven; there is very little text talking about higher-level concepts, principles and design. If you learn best by example, and you want to see a large, high-quality application in Cocoa built from the ground up, then this book might be very good for you. Others will probably find it frustrating.

Rating:
Summary: An unusual and very practical approach, but not for everyone
Review: This book takes an unusual approach that some people seem to like and others don't. The entire book is devoted to building a single Cocoa application, step by step. Each step builds on what has come before, so you really can't jump around in the book at all. And the book is entirely example-driven; there is very little text talking about higher-level concepts, principles and design. If you learn best by example, and you want to see a large, high-quality application in Cocoa built from the ground up, then this book might be very good for you. Others will probably find it frustrating.

Rating:
Summary: The best and most comprehensive tutorials available
Review: This is an excellent programming cook book. Armed with this book and some conceptual background, the world of Cocoa Programming is open to you. This book is not suitable for people who have never programmed before, but you don't need a computer science degree to use it either. The individual recipes are each valuable and explain both the "hows" and "whys" of common Cocoa programming techniques. The book has a "learn by doing" philosophy. The recipes in this book are the best and most comprehensive tutorials available for Cocoa programming, but they are long. Plan to spend several hours working on each recipe. Once mastered, you will be able to modify and reuse each recipe to develop countless applications. This book will give you a sense of how the pieces of Cocoa fit together so that you will be able to more easily approach new programming topics.

Rating:
Summary: The best and most comprehensive tutorials available
Review: This is an excellent programming cook book. Armed with this book and some conceptual background, the world of Cocoa Programming is open to you. This book is not suitable for people who have never programmed before, but you don't need a computer science degree to use it either. The individual recipes are each valuable and explain both the "hows" and "whys" of common Cocoa programming techniques. The book has a "learn by doing" philosophy. The recipes in this book are the best and most comprehensive tutorials available for Cocoa programming, but they are long. Plan to spend several hours working on each recipe. Once mastered, you will be able to modify and reuse each recipe to develop countless applications. This book will give you a sense of how the pieces of Cocoa fit together so that you will be able to more easily approach new programming topics.

Rating:
Summary: Whooha this is bad
Review: Unlike the person who gave this book five stars I can't give this any more than two. If there were any good books about Cocoa programing I would give this one star. I gave it two because this was the best I read until now.
Ok so why do I think this book is crap? Well because this is one of those books that is about one single project where you can get lost pretty quick. Or let's say 735 pages of one project separated in several huge tutorials. The first chapter is about 150 pages and I get fed up with the fact that the author never gets to the point. So what happens if you don't understand or do something wrong in ... well almost anywhere? Suddenly you may not get your app working and you can't go on since you didn't get the app to compile.
And this has to be pointed out - IF YOU DO NOT KNOW PROGRAMING - I do think that this book is NOT for you!
You should to have some good knowledge about C, variables, arrays et.c to even start reading this book. I will use this book as a reference, since the "table of topics" are great. Since I didn't get the first tutorial working I can't really go on. I payed 60 US at my bookstore, and I'm REALLY dissapointed. At the book cover it says: "suitable for cocoa first-timers...." I dont agree, it should say "suitable for cocoa first-timers .... with good knowledge of C or C++". If you do read the book, don't forget to read Apples "Inside MacOSX: Object oriented programing and the objective-C language" before you start reading this book! (downloadable at apple.com)
I thaught this book was really difficult even thow I done one C course at school (wich I didn't finish), one Pascal course, have been working as an Lasso develloper for 1,5 years and I'm quite good at javascript.

Rating:
Summary: Whooha this is bad
Review: Unlike the person who gave this book five stars I can't give this any more than two. If there were any good books about Cocoa programing I would give this one star. I gave it two because this was the best I read until now.
Ok so why do I think this book is crap? Well because this is one of those books that is about one single project where you can get lost pretty quick. Or let's say 735 pages of one project separated in several huge tutorials. The first chapter is about 150 pages and I get fed up with the fact that the author never gets to the point. So what happens if you don't understand or do something wrong in ... well almost anywhere? Suddenly you may not get your app working and you can't go on since you didn't get the app to compile.
And this has to be pointed out - IF YOU DO NOT KNOW PROGRAMING - I do think that this book is NOT for you!
You should to have some good knowledge about C, variables, arrays et.c to even start reading this book. I will use this book as a reference, since the "table of topics" are great. Since I didn't get the first tutorial working I can't really go on. I payed 60 US at my bookstore, and I'm REALLY dissapointed. At the book cover it says: "suitable for cocoa first-timers...." I dont agree, it should say "suitable for cocoa first-timers .... with good knowledge of C or C++". If you do read the book, don't forget to read Apples "Inside MacOSX: Object oriented programing and the objective-C language" before you start reading this book! (downloadable at apple.com)
I thaught this book was really difficult even thow I done one C course at school (wich I didn't finish), one Pascal course, have been working as an Lasso develloper for 1,5 years and I'm quite good at javascript.